Heather Hedden teaches in-person taxonomy workshops at conferences once or twice per year. Following is a description of the next conference workshop.
Connecting Users to Content with Taxonomies:
An Introduction to Taxonomy Design and Creation
Organizer: The Information Architecture Conference (IAC)
Date: Tuesday, April 29, 2025, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm EDT
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Taxonomies have evolved from classification systems to adaptable interactive tools to link users to desired content on websites, intranets, and web applications. Taxonomies are not the same as a website’s navigation and can do a lot more through facet filters, term suggestions, and multiple hierarchies. To be truly helpful, however, taxonomies need to be well designed to suit the users and use cases, be customized to the content, and conform to taxonomy best practices and standards so that they are easy and intuitive to use.
This workshop teaches taxonomy creation principles with a focus on serving users. It presents best practices in designing taxonomies, including the principles of wording of terms, sources for terms, incorporating synonyms, creating relationships between terms, and designing hierarchies and facets. Other topics include taxonomy project planning, sources for terms, and taxonomy testing. Exercises and software demos will also be included.
Specific Lessons and Takeaways:
• How taxonomies can enhance search and findability
• What sources to use for developing taxonomy terms and the recommended process
• How to create terms, their synonyms, and relationships, according to best practices
• How to design hierarchies and facets
• How to govern and maintain a taxonomy
Why Should I Sign Up?
Taxonomy design is an important part of information architecture, in helping users get access to content. Many information architects create taxonomies without any training. While general IA methods are applicable to some of taxonomy design, there are other issues that require a deeper understanding of taxonomy principles and best practices.
Description on the conference website
Registration and Cost
Registration for the full-day 7.5-hour workshop is $650.
(This is separate from the $485 conference registration, which is optional.)
Register here.